Will/is Neil Lennon as good as Gordon Strachan at Celtic.

I dont think he does though as times have changed. We are now doing things the right way, developing youngsters and selling them on, trying to progress.

The short term style of Strachan isnt very hard to replicate. Buying experienced players aged 27/28 like Hinkel, Naylor, Nakamura, Hartley, Robson, Donati, Gravesen, Jarosik, Miller, Vennegoor, Zurawski plus short term experienced guys like Pressley, Keane, Doumbe, Dublin that will always do well as they can hold their own as players but its not sustainable in the long run.

Much harder to achieve success with players we have now, half the team 25 or under Forster, Matthews, Wanyama, Ambrose, Rogne, Forrest, McGeouch, Twardzik, Kayal, Ledley, Stokes, Hooper etc

 

Lennon should easily eclipse Strachan domestically but I'm still not convinced by the way his teams often start high profile games and his inexperience will show in UCL matches. He can become a better manager but its a good way off yet

 

Lennon has yet to be as successful as Strachan but that will come with time and the football that Lennons team plays on the pitch is 10 x better. Strachans football bored me tbh but I can't argue with his success.

 

A huge part of our future success will be because of strachan it was him who implemented the changes in our youth academy that seen us build an extensive scouting network in Europe and beyond

 

Strachan was superb for us but I feel Neil Lennon can do even better.

 

This.

People on here at predicting the future with his group stage and league win.

 

I definitely reckon Lennon will better Strachan. We're surely heading in the right direction under Lennon as well with the younger side(s) as opposed to the 3 in a row squad under Strachan which consisted mainly of mainly 27 and 28 year olds. Lennon's efforts in Europe will conclude this debate but I definitely have faith in him to top WGS as a Celtic manager.

 

Remember all the people who used to slag off Strachan for winning against a "poor Rangers team"? One can only assume that they have completely written off Neil Lennon as a manager, he came up against a Rangers team with a 10 point deduction and now won't even play them again. Unless, of course, the reason they didn't like him was down to something else? Rhetorical question by the way, of course I know the answer.

Strachan unquestionably did the better job so far but Lennon is playing a long term game. He is developing as a manager from scratch, as his squad are developing as players. I doubt that Celtic are at a level where we could challenge for the last 16, but maybe in a few years we will be, and if/when we are, that will be down to Lennon developing them. For the same reason that Strachan's achievements were better than O'Neill's since he delivered more on a significantly smaller budget and without the assistance of one of our greatest ever players, if Lennon brings European success with a team like this it would be a greater achievement than the two of them.

 

He does have a long way to go success wise. I think you are doing Strachan a huge discredit, as his success wasn't as easily achieved as you are saying. I do agree that the way Neil Lennon is trying to achieve success could be harder and is definitely the right path for us to go down.

Just like all our managers, Neil will be judged on results. Not just short term results either but how much he achieves in Europe over the next few years. Financially and for the future, the route Celtic are going down is dead exciting but at the end of the day, where Neil Lennon ranks on the ladder in terms of being a managerial success, will come down to result IMO.

 

The question is just wrong, you can discuse about now but never say if he would be better in the future and even guessing makes no sense

 

Neil has the potential to become just as good as O'Neill, let alone Strachan.

 

<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <wunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <wontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--> Is this a joke?

When Strachan was managing Celtic, the Huns might as well have been in D3.

Paul Le Guen LOL

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I must say I like the sort of football we seem capable of playing under Lenny.

Certainly more pleasing than the muscle-&-bustle of the MON era, and almost up there with the highlights of the early Strachan era (3-0 v Benfica springs to mind...)

But whether he can get us to the Champions League knockout stages twice in a row is another matter entirely. I'm not going to write it off, but it would be an extremely impressive feat if he could match GS on European achievement.

 

No, he is not as good as Strachan. Say what you like about WGS but he done very well as our manager. He was not a favorite of mine at all, but credit where credit is due.

Neil has spent a fair chunk of change since being in charge of Celtic and his trophy cabinet should have a few more than it has at the moment. I would say time will tell, but in reality it wont. Neil now has the not so difficult challenge of winning the SPL without a strong rival.

I have never hidden my opinion of the managerial ability of Lennon (Not that I dislike him as a person, I just believe a stronger manager should be in charge of a club the size of Celtic) and I think his inexperience shows with his mental tactics and team selections over the past few seasons.

The football he plays can be attractive, when it works. I hope that the experience he has brought into the club will help push forward but I feel we do lack experience on a higher level, something he should have rectified since joining.

Its all fair and well having talented youngsters, but you need that older wiser head in the dressing room and on the park that has been there and done it before, Neil has failed to deliver this. I believe this will be his Achilles heel.

 

interesting post, agree with some, disagree with other parts particularly the bold.

how much has lennon spent compared to what he has lost? NL had to completely rebuild the team after the pish state that TM had left us in. ok WGS had to rebuild too but it was completely different circumstances.

i hold WGS in high regard, getting 3IAR and last 16 twice is no mean feat at all. but NL can achieve so so much in the next 10 years with celtic and i think that he will go onto exceed WGS in his time here.

 

This is a difficult one, do i think Lenny will achieve as much as Starchan did in Europe? If i'm being totally honest then i dont. That is not me saying that Lenny isn't good enough to get us there, its mainly down to the fact that there are so many teams in Europe now that have open cheque books. I know money doesn't guarantee success, but it certainly doesn't do it any harm. However, i do think Lenny will surpass Strachan in the domestic trophy department. At this moment in time though, Lenny is not as good a manager as Strachan, and anyone that says otherwise is kidding themselves. When you think back to a lot of the great European nights at Parkhead, it was Strachan that led us, and there was a fair few of them. We have not even been close to eclipsing or even matching that. Last season should have been the easiest treble we ever won, had a MON or a Strachan been in charge i think it would have been. A bit of inexperience told i thought. Dont get me wrong, Lenny has been fantastic for us, the team he inherited were shocking and he has brought us on leaps and bounds. I do think a lot of people forget just how much Strachan did for us though and the amount of success he gave us.

 

Strachan's achievements in Europe are light years ahead of anything Lennon has done there. Europe is where he needs to prove himself since league and cups will be a piece of * without Huns.

So no, he's not as good, but I hope he becomes even better.

 

IMO he has to match WGS record with the rangers newco side in the league with 3 in a row and get into the last 16 of the champions league a few times as well before he is near him

 

WGS done the same with o'neils side aswell, just think if the board backed WGS in his last window and he could have still been here and i wonder what would have happend then......